The influence of citizens on public policies is crucial in a democracy, manifesting itself in different ways and on different levels. In the master's thesis, we deal with aspects of influence on the level of individuals, specifically two aspects: political efficiency and political participation. In the empirical part, we compare European countries (participating in the ESS 2016 survey) in terms of the potential impact of citizens on public policies generally and especially in terms of the potential impact on the implementation of climate change policies. We focused on whether differences between countries can be explained by differences in the development of democracies. The potential impact on public policies was measured using the share of respondents holding a high level of potential to influence public policies in selected countries. With respect to the potential impact on the implementation of climate change policies, we were additionally interested in the share of respondents who support or oppose selected policies. We found that potential influence of citizens on public policies is the highest in the Nordic countries. The potential impact ofcitizens on the implementation of selected climate change policies is also the highest in these countries. The differences found between European countries cannot be directly attributed to differences in the development of democracies, but to other factors such as differences in economic development.
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